Gorgeous Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon is gorgeous!   Hoodoos are skinny towers of rock that, in Bryce Canyon, can be from 5 feet to 150 feet tall.  With 2,500 hoodoos Bryce Canyon (which isn’t really a canyon) has the largest grouping anywhere in the world.  We saw a few hoodoos near Banff but there was no comparison to Bryce.  The red and white huge rock walls, the hoodoos and various rock formations, the arches, natural bridges, and more just make Bryce a great place to visit.  For those with more energy and muscle than Mike and I have there are some really interesting looking walks at the bottom of the canyon.  We took various one mile walks along the top.  I am really not a fan of ups and downs as you may have gathered.  At Bryce they often tell you the elevation change on a walk.  For example if the walk starts at 8,100 feet and hits 8,300 feet there is a 200 foot elevation change.  That is net change not gross!  What it doesn’t say is that there might be many 100 foot up and down changes in the middle.

You just can’t see the scale of the scenery in these pictures.  In this picture Mike is standing about three feet from the edge of a cliff that goes down a very long way.  The change in height of the scenery just doesn’t show well.

Driving to Bryce we passed a recent rock slide where enormous slabs of rock had broken off and fallen down.  On one road we were driving at an altitude of 9,500 feet in a thunder storm.  Being in the RV was great.  We pulled over for a few minutes, made a cup of coffee and then drove on.  Life is good.  A little bit later we were on a road that was actually along the summit of a mountain range.  It was a very narrow, twisty road with the mountain plunging down on either side.  It was still raining and we were in a very wide vehicle.  It was somewhat disconcerting.  We came back and drove the same road the next day in the car.  On a clear day, in a much smaller vehicle, sitting lower to the ground where you couldn’t see down the cliffs as far it wasn’t nearly as bad.

Some of the campgrounds in Utah have been interesting.  They haven’t had cable TV hookups but they have had plenty of local TV stations that we could get by antenna.  These stations were showing shows such as: Lost in Space, Maverick, Lucy, My Three Sons, Perry Mason, the original Star Trek, some old police shows etc.  Many (most) of them were in black and white.   Utah weather is also interesting.  On Friday we were in almost 100 degree temperatures, on Sunday, not very far away, I am wearing thermal underwear.  Luckily they say that change is good for you.

When we left Bryce in the RV towing the car we were still going through mountains.  At one point we watched the road get up to over 9,900 feet (3,000 m) in altitude.  Our gas powered V10 engine seemed to do fine.  We stopped in the visitor centre in Bryce as we were leaving and asked if there were any cities before we got to Zion Canyon.  We had decided that we needed a break from nature and needed to catch up on a list of mundane things that we had been putting off.  We were told that there were actually two cities around.  St. George was much larger with a lot more shopping malls.  Cedar City was smaller and more interesting with a Walmart and Home Depot.  Those two stores happened to be exactly the ones we were looking for to stock up on a few items for the RV.  Sometimes I really feel like a changeling in my family because I never even considered spending a day in the shopping malls.  The smaller town was just great for us.

We arrived last night in Cedar City and stocked up on the required items.  Today we took our bikes into town.  The main road that looked very level from the car wasn’t.  It was uphill all the way from the campground.  This is very easy to tell on a bicycle.  We biked around for an hour, found a Shakespeare theatre and bought two tickets for Twelfth Night for tonight.  It will be a change.  Tomorrow we head down to Zion Canyon and then to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  After that we will head towards Albuquerque, New Mexico enroute to visiting with some friends near there.  I am afraid that I see nothing but racing home after we leave New Mexico.  We will probably have to pick up the pace as soon as we leave the Grand Canyon.  Time has just gone by way to fast.